India Has Lost the Second-Largest Forest Area Among All Countries in Five Years

India lost 668,400 hectares of jungles on average between 2015 and 2020, a new report has said. From a report: The is only second to the scale of deforestation in Brazil, noted the report released last month by Utility Bidder, a UK-based utility costs comparison firm. Brazil lost nearly 1.7 million hectares of forest between 2015-2020, as climate change adversely affected forest growth. Utility Bidder's report analyzed deforestation trends in 98 countries over the past 30 years. "As the country with the second largest population in the world, India has had to compensate for the increase in residents -- this has come at a cost in the way of deforestation," the report stated. Since prime minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, his government has given an impetus to stalled projects approved under his predecessor, besides launching fresh ones. For this, vast areas of forestry needed to be cleared.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.